Firm fined £1m after two workers hurt in six months

The company admitted multiple health and safety breaches

The operators of a Scottish chipboard factory have been fined £1,148,000 after safety failings caused serious injuries to two different workers within six months.

WestFraser (Europe) Ltd, formerly known as Norbord, admitted multiple breaches of health and safety at its plant in Cowie village near Stirling.

One worker suffered serious injuries after his leg was caught in moving parts in a storage bunker, while another fell more than 13ft (3.96m) after a rusty plate gave way on a rooftop gantry.

Norbord was fined £2,125,000 in 2022 for an incident at the plant in which an employee suffered fatal burns.

The factory, a major employer in the local area, opened in 1970 and was originally known as Caberboard.

Stirling Sheriff Court heard that in January 2020, utility operator Sean Gallagher entered the bunker, which stored biomass for the plant's boilers, in order to clear a clogged auger - a tool used for boring holes.

Without turning off the power to the auger and isolating the system, he got into the bunker through an inspection hatch that had no protective guard fitted, and his right leg became entangled in the auger.

He was taken to Forth Valley Royal Infirmary with compound fractures to both the tibia and fibula in his right leg and multiple lacerations.

Emergency services called

The court heard that Mr Gallagher has not returned to work since the incident.

The court also heard the company had since fitted a secondary guard to the hatch, secured by a padlock, with the key kept secure in the supervisor's office, and only issued in the event of the entire system being isolated and locked off.

The second incident took place in July that year.

Scaffolder David McMillan, an employee of Chester-based Palmers Scaffolding UK, was providing holiday cover at the site he was instructed to help erect scaffolding using a permanent gantry on the roof accessed by a fixed ladder.

Having completed his task on the roof, he set out to descend, but as he jumped down onto the gantry a rusty floor plate gave way, falling to the ground and taking Mr McMillan with it.

The court heard it was "immediately obvious" to his colleagues that he was seriously injured, and the emergency services were called.

He was taken to the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow with ankle fractures, a shattered left heel, a broken elbow and ribs, multiple fractures to vertebrae in his neck, a collapsed lung and a broken finger.

Inspectors concluded the "likely cause" of the walkway floor collapsing was corrosion of a floor plate at its supporting edge.

'Risk of death'

The court heard that immediately after the accident, the gantry was placed out of bounds, dismantled, and removed.

Sheriff Keith O'Mahony said that in the case of the auger incident, the victim, for reasons unknown, had departed from safety procedures the company had operated successfully for years.

He said: "What I have to assess is not what the injured party did, but rather what he was able to do as a result of the health and safety deficiency."

In the case of Mr McMillan, Sheriff O'Mahony said there was "evidence of confusion" between departments as to who had responsibility for maintenance of the gantry.

He said: "The injuries sustained were severe, and there was plainly a risk of death. There were a number of other workers engaged in the same project and therefore exposed to the same risk.

"The risk itself had never been identified, there is no evidence it was going to be, and therefore no evidence remedial work would have been undertaken."

The plant was the first factory in the UK to manufacture the natural wood substitute MDF.

It is now in Canadian ownership and operates two sites in the UK, at Cowie and Inverness, with the Cowie site employing 320 people.